The need for a "killer instinct"

The Lakers are 53-13 but coach Phil Jackson has noticed that something has been missing from his club in the second half of the season:

"I thought we had perhaps a better killer instinct earlier in the year, if you can use that term," Jackson said. "I'm not fond of it, but when we had a team [down] 15, we'd try to extend it to 25 and tried to take the heart out of teams earlier in the year. Right now, I think that we've kind of played around with teams at times and allowed them to stay around in games and this is one of them."